THE CYBERNETICS OF SOCIETY
The Governance of Self and Civilization
Copyright © by Barnabas D. Johnson
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Summary
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SOCRATES: Or again, in a ship, if a man having the power to do what he likes, has no intelligence or skill in navigation [αρετης κυβερνητικης, aretes kybernetikes], do you see what will happen to him and to his fellow-sailors?
Plato, Alcibiades I; Benjamin Jowett, translator
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The word "cybernetics" shares the same root as the word "governance" and contrary to simpleton notions has relatively little to do with computer-aided, internet-mediated machinery and institutions. It has everything to do with thought-aided, purpose-directed, history-illuminated, feedback-dependent, and future-affirming or "feedforward-sensitive"[1] governance.
That said, our modern age of computer-aided, internet-mediated knowledge and conduct, etc., enhances the cybernetics of self and civilization. That enhancement might trigger a near-future "singularity": a difference not of degree but of kind a fundamental reshaping of self and civilization, with deepest implications for human liberty, justice, accountability, and governance.
This website will explore the realms of cybernetics, properly understood, in all respects. It seeks to illuminate the "art of governance" in aid of illuminating the meaning and importance of constitutional democracy, worldwide ... and possibly beyond our current biosphere. Medium and message will be mutually-defining. How we proceed in addressing this subject is the key to understanding it.
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In asserting the relationship between "government" and "cybernetics" kybernetes, often spelled kubernetes, referring to the art of the pilot and the art of wise governance Socrates was essentially summarizing the entirety of Greek philosophy, integrating Mythos, Logos, and Nomos.
This kind of piloting must integrate knowledge of the changeless (metaphor: "stars") and the naturally changing ("winds and waves") in order to alter and fine-tune the humanly changeable: the angle of the rudder, the trim of the sail. In a deep sense, however, this cybernetic process inevitably changes the "changeless" in human culture, including our ultimate goals. These writings explore how such ultimate goals have changed, and must change further.
The rudder and sail are "linked" not physically but cybernetically, and this linkage is somewhat analogous to that of the three branches of government in a competent constitutional democracy. Changing one affects the others. These branches co-exist, indeed coevolve, in a dynamic "self-governing equipoise" that has been designed both deliberately and through distributed intelligence, including distributed evaluation of explicit and tacit (unarticulable?) cultural know-how to secure liberty, justice, the general welfare, and institutions of systemic oversight and improvement.
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The idea of emergent cultural know-how is crucial here, for it implies a learning-by-living process of acquiring, improving, and accumulating skills aimed in the art of good governance at converting past experience into future choices and actions which are feedback-sensitive, subject to revision and further learning-by-living.
A government that does not cultivate and harvest feedback, including "unwelcome" news and reproof, is a contradiction of terms. It is illogical. It flies in the face of systematically-gathered, analyzed, and synthesized experience and speculation, thereby mocking science. And it is not cybernetic. It is not a "government" worthy of that word. It is not good. So far, so conventional.
But, as suggested, we must go further: Being cybernetic, a good government must also be "feedforward-sensitive": systematically harvesting responsible speculations about alternative futures. Socrates could hardly have imagined how this aspect of his metaphor for example, how a steersman might change course in light of radioed news about an impending storm or about better olive-oil prices in a different port might transform his understanding of wise governance. Truly, we know, "best governance" requires the present to stand in the shoes of a "virtual future" that judges current proposals and actions in light of their likely consequences. In that sense, law-making, law-implementing, law-refining, and similar endeavors all focused on systematically-generated knowledge of the past and speculation about alternative futures are not only goal-oriented but also goal-redefining, culture-reforming, civilization-reconstructing.
They are cybernetic because they require that we strive to know ourselves better so that we might govern ourselves more wisely, with greater excellence, with aretι. But, being "creations" of past cybernetic evolution, our civilization-reconstructing capacities are now fundamentally different from what they were in Socrates' time. And our definition of aretι must change accordingly.
When a democracy guarantees freedom of inquiry, association, and expression, including a free press; and establishes checks and balances among governmental organs that include an independent judiciary; and ensures free and fair elections for legislators and highest-level executive officers; and forbids electoral and governmental corruption in its many sordid guises, including debasement of the Conversation of Democracy by lies, defamations, unfair restrictions on media access, unwarranted governmental secrecy or manipulation of truth, and the silencing or unjust prosecution of critics; when, in short, a democracy ordains institutions by which majority and coalition rule is competently balanced by minority and individual rights and otherwise establishes Ordered Liberty based on the Rule of Law governed by the Rule of Reason then, and only then, does it merit being called a constitutional democracy.
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Thinking creatively and optimistically about this, we realize that we must be equal in our liberties, and hence equal in all constitutional restrictions upon our fundamental rights. Thus, we must be equal under the law. That is the essence of justice the path towards individual and societal health according to the so-called Western Legal Tradition. This theme is developed "mythologically" in Arakam to Jurlandia, whose pedagogical approach is intended for deep, internet-mediated explorations of the First Trinity Mythos, Logos, and Nomos. This theme is central to that "evolving jurisprudence" which undergirded isonomia: justice, properly understood that necessity which is the mother of our resulting invention, demokratia.
The "subordination" of demokratia to isonomia is crucial. Put differently, there is far too much talk of democracy and far too little of constitutional democracy that is ... well, that is what this website seeks to illuminate. Here is a working definition:
A constitutional democracy is a government under law in which coalition and majority rule is balanced by minority and individual rights, and in which most rights are balanced by responsibilities — including the responsibility of each citizen to study the history and theory of constitutional government in order to illuminate it in ways that no definition ever can … and in order, thereby, to allow it to evolve further in light of ancient wisdoms and the needs of our evolving global civilization.
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Consciously and deliberatively coevolving our freedoms and empathies, and "incarnating" their governance within natural, made, and moral-intellectual environments, we have traveled far. As we reflect upon the human condition, upon this long-term "controlled experiment" we are performing upon ourselves and our planetary Self, we know that freedom has formed us, empathy has expanded our capacities, purpose has steeled our common determination, and the Conversation of Democracy has become our preferred path towards defining, and governing, that "motile colony" by which our biosphere has parented its memesphere, this Info-world of coevolving ideas and ideals that compose us and offer our emerging global civilization's salvation.
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Footnote [1]: In general, wherever in these Jurlandia writings I refer to "feedback" I include what here I have termed "feedforward" which is, in essence, feedback based on speculations (presumably responsible and well-grounded speculations) regarding the future, including various alternative futures that might transpire based on current choices. The essence of teleology is that it is based not only on knowledge of the past and present, but also on "knowledge of the future" based thereon. Cybernetics is by order and dimension teleological. (Go back)
Go to Full Essay: The Cybernetics of Society